Matthew McConaughey asked Tom Hanks for weight loss advice

Matthew McConaughey turned to Tom Hanks for drastic weight loss advice after he signed on to play an AIDS victim in new film “The Dallas Buyers Club.”

The double Oscar winner shed the pounds for roles in “Cast Away” and “Philadelphia,” in which he portrayed an AIDS victim, and McConaughey thought it would be a good idea to seek him out for help before he embarked on a near-starvation diet.

The “Magic Mike” star, who looks emaciated in the powerful new film, reveals he turned to Hanks because he didn’t want to simply shed the pounds – he wanted to lose a lot of weight.

He tells People, “I actually called Tom and had a great conversation with him about what he learned about losing weight for ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Cast Away,’ and I consulted a nutritionist about the best way to do this.

“I was going around and people were going, ‘Hey, are you feeling all right?’ But then I hit 135 pounds and I ran into somebody and they didn’t just ask if I was all right, they said, ‘My God, we need to get you some help’. And I thought, ‘There we go. That’s the perfect spot’.”

But McConaughey insists he was never ill, adding, “I fed myself good food, just not much of it. I found through this journey that the human body is much more resilient than we give it credit for.

“Somebody told me they heard a story about how I didn’t have any energy on set, but I was kind of uncontainable with energy. All the acuity, energy and power I lost from the neck down transferred to the neck up.”

Ironically, Hanks recently revealed he has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and that he would not be bulking up or slimming down for any more film roles, stating, “The gaining and the losing of weight may have had something to do with it because you eat so much bad food and you don’t take any exercise when you’re heavy.”